Wednesday in my International Relations class for the Mexican students, each had to give a small presentation about a female political leader of the 20th or 21st century. After everyone had finished telling the group about the different presidents and prime ministers, I posed the question: "If we had to elect one of these people to become the leader of our class, for whom would you vote, and why?" The options were: Corazon Aquino, Violetta Chamorro, Benazir Bhutto, Indira Gandhi, Golda Meir, Angela Merkel, and Margaret Thatcher (there had been a few other possibilities, but these are the ones they each selected to learn about). Their responses really impressed me. After all 7 of the students had voted, the results were:
Violetta Chamorro - 1
Angela Merkel - 3
Margaret Thatcher - 3
To break the tie, they insisted that I cast the deciding vote. I hemmed and hawed, discussing what I liked about each, detailing why it was difficult to choose one. But, of course, I eventually came down to either Thatcher or Meir with Merkel a close third (after all, I'm both a Saxon and a Jew), explaining how significant I felt it was that both Thatcher and Meir had demonstrated that women can be successful as commanders-in-chief. Certainly the Yom Kippur War outweighs the Falklands War in terms of military crises, but since Meir had no chance of winning our class election, I went with Thatcher. If only the Tories had been as smart as my students (John Major? Please.), the Iron Lady might still be kicking ass and taking names!
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